The other night I got bored and tried to figure out how to write my name in Kanji. My friends tell me Ashley is translated into Ashuri. So I looked up the kanji for A Shu and Ri. My problems are with Shu and Ri, since there is only one Kanji for A, which means next/sub-/asia, I had no problems there... However, Shu has 14 different Kanji all meaning something different (of course), and theres also Shuu (u with the - over it), and Ri has 8 different Kanji.

So, is there special rules for which Kanji youre supposed to use? Do I just pick the Kanji I want so it will mean something nice, or intelligible atleast? I played pick and choose for about two hours, and I found you really cant do anything with "A" unless you wanted to for "Essentially Sub-Rational" hehe.

Actually, you can use kanji for your name. You can pick three with the individual readings "a", "shu" and "ri" and put them together.

The following combinations don't mean much as a whole, but they are both kanji representations of the name "Maria". When you use kanji combinations for what they sound instead of what they mean, it's called "ate-ji" (当て字)

麻里安
万梨阿

So, yes, it can actually be done. It isn't advised for foreign names, though. But I think it'll work pretty well in your case since the syllables in "ashuri" appear in Japanese.

As for the original poster's question, it depends on many factors. It's up to you to choose the kanji you want. There is no fixed rule.

Last edited by hihlordjp on Sat 03.19.2005 12:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ashley, I found this great page where you can look up your names in japanese, Don't know if it is always correct but always fun to have some facts. Just the name Ashley didn't have a kanji in this page but still meant Ash Grove.
[url]
http://www.takase.com/Names/NameInJapanese.htm[/url]